Seven Kings bots-2

by John R. Fultz

  “One does not need to stare at the sun to understand its brightness, Majesty,” said the sage, tugging at a single braid of his white beard. “Have I not read your previous tomes, and every line of your inconstant poetry? I have no reason to believe that this volume will not be a masterwork. Your father would be very proud of you.”

  Lyrilan shrugged his shoulders and poured wine into a crystal goblet for his guest. He refilled his own cup with more of the Uurzian vintage. Now that his head need no longer be clear, he could afford to get good and drunk. Then would come sleep, long and deep. After that, he would take his wife in the way he had so long denied himself.

  Ramiyah, he prayed, please be able to forgive my long absence. Now I will give you children, as many as you desire. He knew there would come a day when another unwritten book would call out to him, possess his body and spirit, and demand that he write it into existence. Someday he would creep from his bed and find himself chained to the writing desk again, obsessed with some new work. Yet now he put the thought from his head. He must find a balance between this solitary work and his duties as husband, as King, and eventually as a father.

  “Stay here,” he told Volomses. “The chamber is yours. Read it. It needs your eyes. Only when I have gained your studied endorsement will I have it bound and passed to the scribes for duplication.” Lyrilan waved to his servant, who opened a wall closet and brought fine new robes for the King as he shed his sweat-stained tunic.

  Volomses gave a solemn half-bow. “I will not leave this chamber until I have done so,” he swore. Servants would bring the sage meals and wine, and even courtesans if he wished, while he inhabited the study and perused Lyrilan’s pages. This was a ritual Lyrilan had enacted with every book he had written for the past seven years. His first volume, The Perilous Quest of Prince D’zan, Scion of Yaskatha, was one of five such tomes to grace the shelves of the Royal Library of Uurz. Each of those volumes had benefited from the editorship of Volomses. This book of Dairon’s life would be the sixth. Lyrilan wondered if, someday when the old sage had passed away, he could ever write another book or have the courage to put it on public display. He put the thought from his mind.

  “Thank you,” he said, embracing the sage as an uncle or cousin. “They are never finished until you read them.”

  Volomses nodded. His gaze wandered to the manuscript as he drank from the goblet, then his head turned back to Lyrilan, who had donned a robe of green and gold, a cape of liquid-blue silk, and hose of black velvet. His wiry legs were far too thin for going bare, even in the long heat of the drought.

  “Your brother expects you at the feasting,” said the sage, as if he muttered a warning.

  Lyrilan nodded. “I will not disappoint him. In fact, I may drink more wine than he does this night.” The servant handed him a thin coronet of gold with a single emerald set at the center of the forehead. Lyrilan slipped it on to fit tightly about his brow and arranged the long, oiled curls of his black hair. “Tell my wife I await her in the Grand Hall,” he said. The page rushed off to summon his mistress.

  Volomses still had not looked away from his King. “You know there will be gladiators? Khyrein spies in a duel of death.”

  Lyrilan nodded, took a deep breath, and drained his cup of its red refreshment. Already he felt the pleasant sting of the wine between his temples. He sighed.

  “I did not,” he admitted. “My brother’s command?”

  Volomses stared out the window at the falling gloom of evening. Stars winked in the deep twilight. The sun was nearly lost beneath the flat horizon, and golden towers stood purple as wounds. “More than likely the idea came from Lord Mendices,” spat Volomses. “That one has a hunger for blood that is never quenched. Would that he were not so close in your brother’s affections.”

  Lyrilan pulled on tall boots of black oxen leather. He felt as stiff and formal as he looked. The sundown had brought little relief from the day’s heat, and he looked forward to the great fan bearers at the feast, if not the blood sport.

  “Or perhaps it was Talondra?” he asked. His brother’s wife was an olive-skinned Sharrian. Her vicious beauty was exceeded only by her absolute hatred of Khyrei, the nation that had reduced Shar Dni to rubble in a single day of sorcery and slaughter. Her presence fueled Tyro’s lust for war as oil fed a brazier’s flames. Perhaps it was that dark passion, that very eagerness to spill Khyrein blood, that so attracted Tyro to her above all other courtesans. Perhaps it was her keen ambition to revenge the dead of Shar Dni that had impressed Tyro enough to make her his Queen. Dairon would not have approved, but Lyrilan had never said this to his brother. It was not his place.

  Lyrilan must be the Peace Speaker. He must provide the balance to his brother’s glory-seeking war lust. Dairon had refused to initiate or participate in a war of vengeance. Lyrilan understood why. At one time he had thought that Tyro also understood. Perhaps it did not matter anymore now that Dairon was gone. His influence over Tyro was no more.

  Would Tyro deign to read the book his brother had written? Would he rediscover the principles and philosophies that had made their father a great soldier and a great ruler?

  That is why you really wrote this book, a voice inside him whispered. You wrote it for Tyro. You hope it will reach him.

  Lyrilan shook his head. The wine was strong.

  He strapped a jeweled dagger to his belt, strictly for the sake of formality. Now he descended the spiral stairs toward the opulent heart of the Palace of Sacred Waters. A pair of wing-helmed guards accompanied him, mute but for the clatter of their boots and the jangling of scabbards.

  He braced himself for the sight of tonight’s bloodshed, a gaudy entertainment staged in the guise of justice. Normally he would never attend such an event, and would even argue its legitimacy with his brother. But he had learned one thing above all others in his thirteen months of being a King. He had learned to choose his battles carefully.

  Though he must endure watching a man die during the feast, at least he would know the comfort of Ramiyah’s presence. They might even finish the dining and depart before the combat began. This would no doubt irk Tyro, but Lyrilan enjoyed sending such subtle signals of disapproval. Where Tyro was blunt, Lyrilan was understated.

  The Scholar King and the Sword King, they were called. While two Kings ruled Uurz, there could be no Emperor, for that was a single title, meant for only one man to bear.

  Always in the back of his mind, Lyrilan knew what this meant.

  One of them must eventually die before Uurz would again have an Emperor.

  It was a sobering fact that he had taught himself to utterly ignore.

  The Feasting Hall was a hive of activity. A hundred barefoot servants rushed about in white togas serving platters of roasted meat, towers of sliced fruits, brown loaves and steaming broth. The royal board lay heavy with delicacies contrived by a squad of clever cooks, and vintages dark as ruby from the palace cellars sat along the table in crystal decanters. Already a few dozen noble couples and lacy courtesans had arranged themselves along the board, sipping at sparkling goblets, toying with powdered curls, whispering heresies into bejeweled ears, and chewing the flesh of plump black grapes plucked from jade bowls.

  Squat pillars of white marble veined with violet lined the sides of the hall, and high windows admitted the evening breezes. The flames of torches dances in their sconces. The smells of steaming provender and wafting perfumes filled the high chamber. The walls lay hidden behind tapestries of ancient weave set with scenes of past Emperors leading their armies to victory or battling fiery Serpents in apocalyptic scenes that probably never happened. Yet the jewel eyes of the tapestry heroes gleamed bright as stars in the hall.

  The floor was inlaid with a mosaic representing all the great ages of the world, from the Time of Walking Gods to the Age of Serpents, on to the Scattering of Tribes, the Age of Heroes, and many others, ending with the Age of the Five Cities. Four of those great cities still stood in this the Modern Age, yet there were no depict
ions of New Udurum. That titanic capital of black stone lay north of the Grim Mountains and was not founded by the Tribes of Man, but by the fickle northern Giants. It was Vod of the Storms who had opened Udurum’s gates to Men, and the thousands of refugees from fallen Shar Dni. One city was annihilated by darkest sorcery; another was transformed by similar powers.

  The people of Uurz were close allies with Vireon, Son of the Giant-King, who now ruled Udurum. Yet in their hearts they did not fully trust the Tall Ones; many living still in Uurz remembered the day when Giants conquered their city and crushed the bloodline of their aged Emperor. Those survivors of Shar Dni’s destruction who had not fled to the City of Men and Giants fled instead to Uurz.

  In recent years, rumors of the Giants’ departure from Udurum had spread to the green-gold city. Merchants from Udurum said the Uduru went farther north to find a new home in the Icelands. Still, there were many in Uurz who never forgot the sight of a Giant host thundering against the city walls, and they half expected the Uduru to return one day and take back the city they had conquered then abandoned.

  At the far end of the great table, on a raised dais of glassy marble, Tyro the Sword King sat staring into the eyes of his wife and lover, Talondra. She lounged at his side in her own gilded chair of velvet and silk, her ring-heavy hands caressing Tyro’s chest. Tyro was everything his scholarly twin was not: broad of shoulder, dusky of skin, heavily muscled, and radiant with royal power. His long black hair hung wild about his shoulders, but his heavy beard was tied into a single braid with hoops of golden wire. His scarred chest was bare in the heat, glimmering with a necklace of topaz and opals. He wore a plaited bronze kilt in the manner of a legionnaire, underscoring his status as the realm’s chief soldier, his strapping legs bare, jeweled sandals resting on a lush carpet. Bracers of silver and onyx sheathed the Sword King’s forearms, and a slim crown of gold and emerald (identical to Lyrilan’s own) sat upon his brow.

  Tyro did not need the crown to evoke a majestic aura, yet he wore it as custom dictated. Against the right arm of his high seat leaned a broadsword in a scabbard crusted with emerald and jade, the Emperor’s final gift to his warrior son. Dairon had left his journals to Lyrilan, his sword to Tyro. The man knew his sons well.

  The eastern wing of the hall was covered with black sand, forming a small arena where tonight’s combatants would shed one another’s blood. Four flaming braziers sat about the sandy area, each of them fronting two spearmen in polished breastplates. These eight guards would ensure the gladiators did not flee. It would be a fight to the death, the winner gifted with the Kings’ mercy. An ancient rite of justice, one that Tyro had revived only recently. Lyrilan’s protests had been powerless to prevent it. Now he must endure the blood spectacle.

  Ramiyah waited between two pillars, standing apart from the mass of courtesans and revelers who streamed into the hall in their best satins and gemstones. A trio of serving girls stood at her back, having dressed her in a slim gown of crimson trimmed with amber thread. Her golden hair fell like a mantle of silk to the middle of her back, and her neck bore a collar of emerald and jet, a gift from Lyrilan on their wedding night two years ago. Diamonds hung from her seashell ears, and the nails of her fingers were perfect as red almonds.

  She was Yaskathan, born and bred in that southern kingdom of tall ships, vast orchards, and year-long heat. The closeness of the drought did not bother her, only the dry spell of her husband’s attention. Yet that long season was over. Her eyes fell upon Lyrilan, blue as northern ice, yet warm as sunrays. She rushed toward him as he entered through the grand arch. The guards slowed their pace so as not to intrude upon the happy reunion.

  Lyrilan wrapped his arms about Ramiyah with a sigh of relief. Her first look had said, I waited for you in perfect faith. Twice now he had abandoned her for his scrolls and inks and quills. Two books written and two periods of loneliness that his wife had borne with the patience of a Goddess. He inhaled the lilac scent of her hair, the jasmine sweetness of her neck. He kissed pink lips, caressed warm brown skin.

  “Gods of Earth and Sky-how I’ve missed you,” Lyrilan told her.

  “Is it finished?” she asked.

  He nodded. “Volomses is reading it now. I am returned to the land of the living.” He smiled, and she caught his joy in her own face, sending it back to him like a reflection in silvered glass.

  He looked beyond the bobbing heads and bared shoulders of the assembled courtiers. His brother had noticed his arrival. Tyro raised his right hand in greeting, while his left lay firmly in the grip of the Lady Talondra. The Brother Kings sent their smiles across the hall like messengers’ arrows aimed at one another.

  “Let us dine,” said Lyrilan, leading Ramiyah toward the board. The horde of courtesans and fools spread apart like rainbow-hued water, and the royal couple walked between two aisles of bowing and kneeling nobles. Servants stopped in their tracks, food steaming on great oval trays, wine sloshing in fresh decanters, until Lyrilan approached his seat.

  At the opposite end of the table, much farther from his brother than he would have liked, a second dais rose to support Lyrilan’s throne and its companion seat. He assisted his wife as she ascended the three steps to her chair. When she was safely nestled on a velvet cushion there, he sat himself unceremoniously upon the throne. Now he stared across the heaped board and the two hundred guests directly at Tyro. The Twin Kings sat above their courtiers on platforms of equal height. Like the identical crowns, the twin thrones showed the equality of the two monarchs. Pairs of servants cooled both of the royal couples by wafting great feathered fans made from the feathers of Mumbazan ostriches.

  Talondra stared with tigerish eyes at Ramiyah. The two women were nothing alike. Talondra’s raven-black hair set her apart, as did her unrestrained curls. Her eyes, like Ramiyah’s, were blue, yet Talondra’s eyes were cold. They reminded Lyrilan of the glistening snowdrifts between the Grim Mountains, and the perilous crossing he and Tyro had made eight years ago.

  Talondra was a child of Shar Dni, yet her family had sent her here a year before that city fell to horror and war. Her loathing of Khyrei and its pale peoples was already a legend among the court. Rumors said that she had tortured to death with her own hands a Khyrein spy found in the palace three years ago. Her constant influence had utterly ruined any Uurzian merchant families who claimed a trace of Khyrein blood. No matter that most of those hapless fools had never set foot in Khyrei themselves. Talondra would never be satisfied until Tyro led the Legions of Uurz south to conquer the jungle kingdom.

  Tyro wanted war with Khyrei as a matter of honor; Talondra wanted vengeance, raw and bloody and bitter on the tongue. This made her far more dangerous than he. Lyrilan was not the only member of the court to recognize this uncomfortable truth.

  The Brother Kings were seated just far enough apart that conversation would be impossible. If they wished to discuss some matter, they must send servants to carry their words around the table like honeyed pastries. Lyrilan noted the presence of Lord Mendices without surprise. The tall hawk-nosed warrior with the shaven skull and oiled beard was not dressed in his customary bronze mail and plate, but wore instead a nobleman’s green-gold toga, a wreath of grape leaves twined about his narrow skull. His dark eyes scanned the board, making mental note of all those present, assessing each personality for its usefulness in his palace schemes. Rubies glimmered on his fingers like drops of blood. Of all the courtiers at table, Mendices sat closest to Tyro, as he loomed large in the Sword King’s private councils.

  A trio of musicians began to play on harp, pipe, and lute, signifying the start of the festivities. The assembled People of the Court fell to feasting with hearty abandon, staining their lips with red wine and greasy gooseflesh. Only the unmarried women held back, nibbling at dainty bits of food, filling their slim bellies with drink that made them lightheaded and prone to bouts of giggling. Servants brought Lyrilan and Ramiyah platters of food and goblets of wine, holding them steady as living tables while the Sch
olar King and his wife dined. Across the mass of feasters, Talondra fed Tyro strips of pink meat with her own supple fingers.

  Ramiyah spoke of a trip to Murala, possibly a sea cruise to Mumbaza. Like Lyrilan’s mother, she loved to sail on the great Uurzian galleys. Lyrilan made no promises, but nodded. Perhaps it was time for a few days away from this court with its stifling formalities and increasingly barbaric entertainments. A page boy approached and brought him word from the table’s far end.

  “Majesty,” the page bowed, “your brother bids you welcome. King Tyro rejoices to see you come down from your lonesome tower. His love for you has turned to worry over your well-being.”

  Lyrilan smiled. “Tell my brother that I missed him too. But this night belongs to my Ramiyah. I will speak with him tomorrow, if he will, in the Garden of Memory.”

  The servant bowed again and carried his message around the teeming table to the seat of Tyro. Tyro nodded and turned to share his thoughts with Talondra. The dark-haired Queen looked not in Lyrilan’s direction, but focused only on Tyro. She could exert an iron influence over his deeds. Lyrilan had learned this the hard way, as she pulled his brother further and further away from him during the last four years.

  In some way the brotherly bond had been shattered on the day of Tyro’s wedding. Was this only natural for brothers? As twins, the two boys had shared a special intimacy while growing, one that endured despite their separate natures. Each supplied strength where the other displayed weakness. Lyrilan often prayed to the Four Gods that the bond of twins was not broken, only muted. Yet he, too, had often pulled away from his brother. When he was consumed in the research and composition of a new book, he turned away from all companions. Even his wife. He squeezed Ramiyah’s hand and silently swore to find a greater balance between his writing, his relationships, and his Kingship.